Remaining Seeds Started

Today I started the last 3 trays of seeds.  I started 30 tomatoes plants, 5 cells of green onions, 6 cells of kale and 12 cells of broccoli.  I am growing all of the tomatoes I grew last year Bloody Butcher, Slava , Black plum, Yellow plum, Cabernet, and new this year some Sweetie cherry tomatoes.

This gives me a total of 6 tray of seeds under 3 lights.

The seeds I previously started are doing pretty well, almost all of the peppers are up except the yellow Hungarian I have had issues with them in the past but they are very disappointing this year. I don't think I will be trying to grow them next year right now out of 21 seeds I have one that has come up.

Spring Planting

Today I managed to finish up the majority of my planting, later for some things but because of moving didn’t really have any other choice.  On my way home I stopped by the community garden to plant beets, and various lettuces.   When I got home I planted 4 different kinds of carrots as well as all my peppers and tomatoes.  The peppers and tomatoes needed to be hardened off better but they should survive.

Sprouts

Going to just put up a few quick posts in the next few days as stuff comes up.  Today the leeks and peas are both poking through the soil and as well as the tomatoes!

Seeding

Last year I seeded about 3 weeks earlier than I am this year.  My peppers were big and had to have flowers picked off them every couple days and the tomatoes went a little crazy and outgrew the space I had for them.  That is why I am just starting to seed now.  On the top shelf I planted a half tray of peppers, chocolate, and king of the north, jimmy Nardello and sweet banana.  Space is going to be a little more limited this year so I don’t have as much room for everything. A half tray of medusa (because I have tons of seeds that I collected) and the other half of the tray is bok choy and kale. The middle shelf has a tray of tomatoes (Isis, black, yellow cherry tomatoes, alpine, black Ethiopian and polish linguisa tomatoes), and the other tray is half black prince tomatoes and half green onions.  Finally on the bottom shelf I have a full tray of leeks, and in the other tray I have a row of peas, kale and broccoli. My plan is to use that last tray mentioned as sprouts. They are all extra seeds I have leftover that do not have a place in my garden, so figured I might as well try it out.

Peppers and Tomatoes are Done

After the heavy frost last night and the beautiful weather this morning, I decided it was a perfect opportunity to harvest all of the remaining peppers and tomatoes.  I started with the peppers, pulling each plant and then cutting the peppers off of it into a bushel with snips.  I found that it worked really well, cleaning out the plants and making sure I didn’t miss anything all at once.  I ended up with 2 bushels of peppers from my 36 plants. Overall from the whole year’s harvest I figure I ended up with 3+ bushels from those plants.

 

In the picture below you can see the chocolate peppers.  A few were ripe but mostly still green.

 

This is the bushed containing the Jimmy Nardello and the chocolate.  They both did very well, and had my best yields of the 6 varieties. Both had ripe peppers the earlier than the others.

 

These are the purple peppers.  I found that they didn’t start to produce until after the others, and when they did the peppers were of a medium size with thin walls.  The plants were fairly brittle so when picking them you had to be careful.

The Alma paprika did well, but also had slightly lower yield and most of them didn’t ripen up. 
 

King of the North produced great peppers, but took until almost September to give me red peppers.  They did have big green peppers, but were later than the other sweet non bell peppers.

Sweet Hungarian was another great producer, there were lots of them on the plants and they ripened up steady throughout the year.  I would have them at 3^rd on my list for productivity, possibly second.

Finally there are the golden Cal wonder.  Last year these didn’t even survive from the seeds.  This year they grew into nice big plants with my largest peppers.  I had 2 plants and both produced 4 large peppers and a couple smaller ones.  It did however take until the very end of September until I had a yellow one. This is a pepper that would defiantly be on the edge to grow again. There are defiantly better bell peppers out there.

For the tomatoes, I just filled a flat with ripe ones and filled another with any that were still green.  The ripe ones are going to be either used up in the next week or preserved in some way, and the green ones kept around until they either ripen up or go bad.  It’s hard to judge how well they did because they were so crowded but over all they did pretty well.

Saving Peas

On the way home from work today I stopped at the barnyard garden to pick a few peppers and get my share of potatoes.  Overall we only ended up getting slightly more potatoes than we planted due to the summer drought we experienced.  The way I look at it is its better than nothing.  And the peppers I picked looked great, including a couple really tiny purple ones.

After I got home I hit the garden again to continue my harvest.  I picked a bunch of peppers again, a basket of chocolate peppers and basket of jimmy’s as well as a mixed 4lt basket of tomatoes.

These are Jimmy Nardello's

Sweet Hungarian Banana

Alma Paprika

Sweet Chocolate

This is a Golden Calwonder before it has ripened

Purple Beauty

 

I finally managed to get the time to tear out all of the pea plants.  They all came out pretty easily but I'm going to need to leave the trellises in for a little longer so that I don’t kill off the flowers.  The netting is going to be raised off of the ground, to allow me to dig it up and plant buckwheat.  After ripping out all of the plants I shelled all of the peas that have been drying inside.  I ended up with around a 500ml jar full of dried peas.

These were all of the tomatoes I picked. The polish linguisa after trying it is extremely meaty and a great paste tomato.

Black Prince

Kansas Depression

Polish Linguisa

Black Cherry

 

Isis Cherry

 

 

 

Lots of Peppers

Tonight went out and picked a ton of peppers and a few tomatoes as well.  The peppers are all starting to ripen at once.  In the picture below you can see the jimmy nardallo peppers.  There are 34 peppers in that picture.  I also had a few chocolate ones and some sweet Hungarian ones. 

 

The tomato experiment worked!  A little over a week ago, tore out about half of the plants I had planted in the garden and then proceeded to cut back hard the one I did leave.  I figured that there was too much foliage and not enough tomatoes.  By cutting back the plant I hoped that it would trigger the tomatoes to ripen because the plant was “dying”, and it worked.  I picked about a dozen and there are more ripening.
Below are the chocolate peppers.

 

 

 

Tomato Pruning

My tomatoes plants are doing better now that we have finally had some rain, but I still only have green tomatoes.  None of them have changed color and getting slightly concerned that it’s going to be a repeat of a couple years ago where I ended up with only green tomatoes.  So I have decided to cut back my plants to force them to ripen.  I ended up taking out about 10 of my 30 plants entirely and cut the sucker and tops off the rest of them.  It might sound a little extreme but they weren’t trellised properly or even maintained like I wanted to, even after I looked into better methods in the spring.  Hopefully this will result in some nice juicy ripe tomatoes.

Tomatoes

I haven’t mentioned much about the tomatoes this year yet.  The tomato plants are big and bushy but there aren’t a ton of tomatoes on them.  I missed my chance while I was out in Calgary to tie the plants up before they fell over.  Once they hit the ground and started to grow up wards again my 4 foot row spacing became zero.  The only plants that are actually growing up instead of out are the cherry tomatoes in the trellis.  Now it is my own fault for not properly tying them or pinching off the suckers, but I do not want a repeat of 2 years ago.  A couple years ago when my tomatoes went nuts I had a bushel from 2 plants and they were all green.  They were all covered my leaves and never ripened up.

I'm going to give them until next week and then start to cut the plants back hard to hopefully force them to ripen up.  will have to take a look to see what the proper way to do this is, but green tomatoes are not what I envisioned in March when I was planning my garden.

Field Status

Tonight headed into the field to harvest the garlic I had growing there.  It is most defiantly ready.  In fact if I had checked it before I went on vacation it probably would have harvested then.   I ended up digging up 27 bulbs and there are still approximately 30 left with scapes.  The plants are all dry with the leaves snapping off of them but none of the bulbs broke out of their skins.  I'm attributing this to a couple factors: first we haven’t had rain in 3 weeks so any additional moisture to increase their size didn’t happen and second because of the heavy clay soil they are pretty small.  They are about the size I ended up with last year from the bulbils.   I did not intend to leave in access of 30 plants with scapes on them in the field.  The plan was for originally for 5 but was time constrained when I cut them last time and kind of forgot to come back.  Oh well the bulbs are pretty small anyways and this garlic was planted because I had the cloves already.

The scape below grew without any bulbils. It was a music scape from the field

While at the field I checked on the rest of the garden.  Not good news at all.  It appears that deer enjoy watermelon and cucumber plants.  So on all of those hills there aren’t any leaves just vines.  This really bugged me because last year they grew no problem and this year they look terrible.  The pumpkins and gourds are growing but because of the lack of water not the best.  Same goes for the potatoes and peppers, they are there but small and unlikely to get a large harvest from them.  The tomatoes are up but harvest is looking like it will be smaller than last year, few tomatoes per plant.  Only a few of the corn and beans came up.  Not sure if something ate the seeds or if the soil and conditions just kept them dormant.

The potatoes and gourds that were planted in the brush pile are however doing excellently.  They are approximately 10 times the size of their field counter parts and have leaves all over them.

Next year I don’t think that anything is going to be planted in the field.  It just doesn’t grow well.  The soil is very heavy and when it does rain sits on top in pools and floods everything out.  The compost might get a few pumpkins next year but that could be it.

Everything In

It has been a while since I did a full status report on the garden and this morning I had time while it was raining to put one together. 

The corner bed that has the peas in it is doing very well.  They are all up and clinging to the trellis’s.  I have been winding the vines back into the trellis because they are reaching to the south east for the sun.  So far the weeds haven’t been too bad and I'm hoping the leaves that I laid down as mulch between the rows keep them that way.  I have had an issue with creeping grass the last few years and because it is almost impossible to get out, I'm hoping I can smother it.

The bottom bed with the tomatoes, peppers and beans has been finished.  The tomatoes are doing pretty good.  They have started to send out new roots and new shoots.  A couple plants were damaged during the storm we had last week but nothing that should effect their long term growth.  I also noticed that some leaves have bite marks in them but again nothing that should hurt the plants too much.  The leaves that were spread out are keeping the weeds down so far and you can still really smell them.  The peppers just like the tomatoes are sending out new roots and are setting new leaves.  The plants that I was worried about are looking better and the new leaves that are showing on them are darker.  The beans aren’t up yet, but should be through any day now.

The top bed with the garlic, asparagus, rhubarb and greens is the only bed to produce anything yet.  The garlic started to send out scapes around a week ago.  There are a couple scapes on the polish white that have started to curl and others on the northern Quebec that have not appeared yet.  The Viking asparagus that was transplanted last year has been doing very well.  I have been harvesting for about 5 weeks and think that it is time to let the remainder go to seed.  I have had a ton of asparagus beetles that are attacking them and want to make sure I have strong plants for the future.  The Mary Washington is doing better than they were, but I do have some plants that I thought should be stronger than they are.  There are also approximately 10 seeds that have taken seed by themselves.  All of the info I have read says to pick them out so they don’t compete with your other plants.  Because I appear to have something eating the crowns in the wintertime I might let some of them stay.

The rhubarb is doing very well; it has doubled in size since last year and is being picked regularly.  There is something that is nibbling on the leaves but we don’t eat the leaves anyways so it’s not a problem.  The kale, bok choy and broccoli are all going strong.  The transplants survived and all of the new seeds are coming up.  The bok choy has already started to go to seed, so they will be eaten as baby’s and then reseeded throughout the summer.  Of the 5 varieties of lettuce, 2 are fully up and the other 3 it’s hard to tell.  It looks like some of them are coming up but there are a lot of little sprouts there right now.

The carrots boxes are looking great.  I have carrots up in every box and every row I planted except for 2 rows of the scarlet Nantes.  I think it was because of the sandy soil and the fact they just needed a little more water than they were given.  Because I have tons of seeds I have replanted those rows.  In a few of the other varieties I tried to space the carrots exactly so that I didn’t waste seeds or have to thin them, but in a few cases if a couple seeds didn’t germinate I have a 4” gap. I will finish reseeding the very few bare spots next week.  The parsnips are doing just as well as the carrots.  I always read that it’s hard to get parsnip seeds to germinate, but in 2 years I have had great success.

There are also the herbs.  I noticed sprouts this morning in every box but will have to wait a few days to see if its weeds or herbs.  They are literally day old sprouts and could be anything, although I think they are my herbs coming up.

Last but not least is the flower garden. Although I don’t usually talk about it I recently found a plant that I have been looking for since last year. It’s a sedum called red dragon’s blood.  It is a low growing sedum and to be honest I liked it because of its name as well as the red colour that will give the flower bed a little more colour.

Although it’s not really part of my garden I put the fish out yesterday and here is a picture of them, they were moving pretty fast so just look at the blur in the bottom left.

Mulching

The 2 barrels of leaves that have been sitting in the shed since last fall have been spread on the paths and around all of the tomatoes.  An interesting thing I found as I was emptying the first barrel was that the leaves smelled like corn silage.  Now the leaves were wet when they were put in the barrel and packed pretty tight. I find it interesting that they fermented the way they did.  I also finished mulching the peas.  The idea is that the leaves will smother the weeds and retain moisture and then at the end of the year they can be turned into the soil  or if they haven’t fully broken down, added to the compost heap.

Peppers/Field Planting

This morning I planted the peppers in my bottom bed. I was originally going to do 6 plants of each variety but because the Cal wonder did surprisingly well and the Hungarian not as much I made a small adjustment. I ended up planting 2 Calwonder, 4 Hungarian banana and 6 each of purple, chocolate, jimmy, king of the north and Alma paprika. They are all sturdy plants and have started to branch out, a side effect of pinching off the blossoms I think. There are a few plants that look a little yellow but I think some natural light and the ability to spread their roots should help.

After the peppers were planted at home, I headed over to the field to finally plant it. Last night with the help of my uncle and cousin we spread a few yards of sandy soil and compost on top of the one end of the garden. This is where the potatoes were going to be planted.

The garden is laid out with 6’ sections and then a 2’ path between each one. The potatoes are spaced 3 feet apart.

I started by planting the beans in 2 rows 1’ apart at the south end of the field. In the outside row I put my remaining green beans around 15 seeds, and then in the rest of the row I planted 50 seeds of Vermont cranberry bush beans. In the second row I planted my remaining yellow beans also 15 seeds and then the rest of the row was planted with tongue of fire beans around 60 seeds.

The next large 2 sections each have 6 large hills of watermelon. I planted 3 hills each of sugar baby, small shining light, golden midget and Siberian. At the next point in the garden I shortened up my sections lengthwise so that I could put a section the other way to plant corn. The corn runs along the North West side of the garden closes to the bush so that it doesn’t shade out other plants.

The next section is planted with a hill of cantaloupe, and 4 hills of straight eight cucumbers. Nothing has been planted in the middle section yet, but it will be getting some peppers as well as lettuce and other greens. The next section and a half has 7 hills of various pumpkins, and gourds. Following that I have another section and a half of tomatoes. I used all of my leftover tomato plants from home as well as some my aunt had.

This is where the potatoes start. In total there are 6 rows. The first 2 rows have a mixture, then there is a row of red Pontiac, Yukon gold, red chieftain with a few Russian blacks on the end, and the outside row is all banana fingerling. At the end of these rows I have large hills, one is planted with Atlantic giant pumpkins seeds and the other has sweet Siberian watermelon. The corn that was planted at the back was planted in 4 short rows to create a block to help ensure pollination. I have Bloody butcher around 24 seeds and then Seneca Blue Bear Dance roughly 40 seeds planted.

There is room for some pole beans I just need to finish cutting some suitable poles and then set them up. Looking to do this in the next couple weeks and at the same time the lettuce, peppers and anything else will be planted.

The garlic and asparagus are doing very well. The asparagus is all up and starting to increase in size. It could really use some rain, and should get some in the next couple days. The garlic is tall but I am not sure what the bulbs are going to be like. I tried to dig one up and the soil was very hard. I think I may end up with some huge plants and tiny bulbs. If the potatoes are successful where they have been planted this year, I will put garlic there this fall.

 

Tomatoes Planted

This afternoon I finally planted my tomatoes outside.  I ended up planting 31 plants: 5 black cherry, isis cherry, black Ethiopian, black prince, polish linguisa, 4 northern lights and one each of alpine and Kansas depression.

Of the 3 large rows I have one row has been surrounded by a trellis.  The trellis is 3’ wide at the base and 2’ wise at the top. It is 6’ high and approximately 11’ long.  It is pretty much an A frame but a little bigger and not quite that A shape.  The plan is that the tomatoes will grow up and then as they start to tip over, they will have the sides of the trellis to support them.

The other 2 rows have a 3’ stake driven into the ground beside every plant. As they grow that will betide off to the stakes and when they outgrow the stakes I am just going to let them tip.  There will be mulch around then so hopefully any tomatoes on the ground do not become too dirty.

Transplanting

Today the first of my transplants went in.  They were some red Russian kale and broccoli that I started inside before I left on vacation.  Consequently they are very leggy and I am not very hopeful about their survival but I figured I might as well plant them anyways.

The asparagus is still doing great, it is now producing about a lb a week, and I am still waiting for a couple plants to come up.  The asparagus beetles are out though and seem to be enjoying my plants.

I also finished building my trellis for the tomatoes.  The holes were all drilled and the sided all ripped down to size.  It is going to be 6 feet tall, 3 feet wide at the bottom and 2 feet wide at the top, for a little extra support.  The sides are ¾” square pcs that I ripped out wider boards from a skid.  It is going to be 11’ long with a support on both ends and the middle.  It is only going to work for 1 row and on the other 2 rows I am going to use 3’ wooded stakes as well as a few tomato cages that I have.

Planting Preparation

Today I used the ridging hoe to dig up the entire bottom bed.  This was to break up the soil and mix in the manure I spread there on Tuesday.  After drying out a bit, it is better composted that it initially appeared.  Tomorrow I am going to be working on the trellis for the tomatoes as well as cutting a number of stakes.  I decided not to build 3 different trellises and instead am just going to build the one and then use stakes for the other 2 rows.

The remaining mammoth melting snow peas were also planted.   I ended up using all the seeds I had with 200 seeds, seeding 27’ of doubles rows.  The peas that were planted almost a month ago are doing great and are about 6” tall.

I started to harden off the tomato plants last weekend and on Monday started to harden off the peppers as well.  My plan is to have the tomatoes in the ground next week around the 24^th and the peppers any time after the 26^th.  So far I haven't had any problems hardening them off they are tall sturdy plants.  Well the tomatoes are a little bendy just because I couldn’t get the light any higher than it was.

Peppers Flowering

So I noticed a few days ago that a number of my pepper plants are starting to flower.  When I looked this morning there must have been one I missed because it has a full flower on it.  Looking online I found that a number of people recommend pinching off the flowers, until after the plants have been transplanted outside.  I haven’t pinched any off yet but am planning on doing that tonight.  Now the internet did recommend waiting until there was an actual flower to pinch off to make sure you didn’t damage the plant.

Last year I actually had a pepper start indoors, but that plant only grew that one pepper and stayed small until the start of August.  It bore a couple more later on in September but overall was my least productive plant.

My pepper plants are currently around 6 inches tall and look like they are ready for the garden.  In a couple weeks I will not have room for them under the lights anymore and will have to start hardening them off.  By the time I plant on May 19^th –May 26^th they will be 11-12 weeks old depending on when they are planted.  Most sources recommend starting seeds 8-10 weeks before you transplant outside.  This is something I intend to do next year because right now they are just huge and I am afraid a few of them may become root bound. Next year I am going to try starting seeds 8-9 weeks before they need to be transplanted.

The tomato plants aren’t any better, well they are doing great but with regards to me planting early.  By the time that they are transplanted it will have been 10-11 weeks since the seeds were started.  The tomatoes are currently around 7 inches tall and are running out of room faster than the peppers.  They haven’t been thinned out yet because I am hoping that might keep their growth down, which is a little ironic.  I am thinking a 7-8 week time between seed starting and transplants next year might work out a little better.

Tomatoes are up

The tomatoes seedlings have sprouted.  It was only four days ago that they were planted so they are a little ahead of schedule.  There were only a couple up and only of the Northern lights.

Update:  So I figured that this didn’t require another post the day after, it’s now the 28^th and all of the tomatoes are up, literally every seed I planted.   I am very pleased and in about 6-8 weeks they will be headed outside.

Tomatoes

Today I started all of my tomatoes.  I originally picked out 6 varieties that I wanted to plant this year but then with Mandy’s greenhouse having seeds available this year I decided to go with 8 different varieties.  They were planted in 2 planting flats.  Each flat is divided into 3 equally sized areas lengthways.  What I ended up doing was planting 4 varieties with around 15 seeds each ( Northern Lights, Black Prince, Black Ethiopian, Polish Linguisa) and the other 4 with just around 7 seeds each (Black Cherry, Isis Candy, Alpine and Kansas Depression).

They are in the same room in the peppers and planted in the same miracle grow potting soil.  I am looking to have them ready to go in to the garden anytime once May starts.  I'm away the first week of May but think anting them at the end of April is still a little risky depending on the weather so around the 3^rd week of May is the target, along with the peppers.

Feels Like Fall

I know it’s not fall yet, but this last week it sure has felt like it.  Nothing has changed in the garden too much, I am still picking cheery tomatoes every few days and there are lots of beans that need to be picked as well.  The same goes for the zucchini and cucumbers; they have hit their second wind and still producing well.  The plants are dying off a bit but I expect them to last a couple more weeks and then they are being pulled out anyways.  This past week a few red peppers have been picked and a number of them are starting to turn from yellow to orange to red. 

The root vegetables have been doing well, the carrots at the bottom are being picked regularly although some of them have been eaten by small little worms.  I think its carrot fly but at least they only infected some and not all.  I hope they have not gotten into the parsnips but I will have to wait and see.

 The potatoes at both my place and the field have done very well; the ones at the field due to the clay soil are all a nice mini size.  The ones at my place are starting to break through the soil in places and the plants are starting to die off.  The potatoes in the bottom garden did get hit pretty hard my potatoes bugs but by the time they showed up the plants had already flowered and had midsized formed tubers so I didn’t bother to powder them or anything.  I will be looking to harvest some of the potatoes on a regular basis for the next month for eating and then the remainder in mid-October when the plants die down.

The leeks look good and im just trying to think of what I can use them in.  The kale and bok choy that were planted a few weeks ago are looking ok.  They do have some bug damage but nothing too major. 

The garlic that is still in the garden is coming out of the ground this weekend.  About ¾ of the plants have at least 1 dead leaf and while they are all still very green I don’t want to leave them in the ground any longer especially since I want to replant them in October. 

The cover crop experiment has been a success!  The buckwheat is around a foot high and starting to flower.  I might give it another week and cut it down before it all goes to seed.  I am debating on planting some more in the top bed where the peas were.  That area is also getting more soil and a dressing of manure so I am not sure if it will even be worth planting any.